UK gov: should we have 10 year sentences for internet pirates?

[Biscuit]

ha good one - there is a shortage of prison spaces at present (UK) and this will not go away anytime soon - can't really see the crown court circuit advising their judges to make max use of custodial sentences for these offences apart from the odd extreme case / making an example of individual etc

So what's the point in extending the maximum sentence allowed by law?

This whole thing is just a farce. Our existing laws and authority measures are more than adequate for dealing with 'internet pirates'.

[DanceswithUnix]

In principle this seems fair, sentencing should be down to damage and intent not platform used for the crime. But...

I can see how someone can eg sell the latest Minions movie at a market stall and make money, and how that can be big criminal money and will even take on faith that organised crime can be involved.

But how does a criminal gang make money serving content on the internet? Serving adverts to downloaders? Are they taking Netflix style subscriptions? Genuinely puzzled here.

If this is going after individuals who were clearly never going to pay for anything anyway, I think the existing legislation seems adequate.

Either way, this seems rather "meh" to me compared to making ripping illegal in the UK again.

[LSG501]

From what I've read this is for the people making downloads available, not the downloaders, although I'm sure the media companies would have it apply to everyone.... note I say the media companies because it's them that make the most money from selling items, content creators get a very small percentage of any sales which I actually disagree with, they deserver more in this digital age.

In respect the punishment it does seem a bit unbalanced, you've got people killing or seriously injuring people getting sentences shorter than this, but then this is the UK where 'property theft' seems to be a worse crime than serious injury or taking a life these days.

It's also another attempt at stopping the 'illegal downloads' problem without actually fixing the real issue with the legal options. Just recently I wanted to watch a show on crunchyroll only to be told it's not available in my region, yet we pay the same (or more if it's converted to dollars in most cases) as everyone else for a restricted selection, netflix is the same too, their US catalogue is huge compared with the UK.

If the shows aren't available in the country where we want to watch them and you can't get a dvd/blu ray (none out yet) how else are we supposed to watch the show? Oh right wait around for the antiquated artificial location restrictions are lifted for our region, not always done, or get the dvd when it comes.... that's great if the dvd is actually released in the UK (not all anime is).

The media companies need to stop wasting time with chasing after illegal downloading, odds are the people downloading these won't buy the stuff anyway, and solve the distribution issues which plague legal viewing options, but then this isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Oh and the ripping media being illegal won't make a jot of difference, people will just do it anyways. The 'CD tax' is actually in EU legislation which can be taken up by any member state if they want, iirc this is actually why the ripping was made illegal again, we never gave the media companies any income from pretty much any media which can store said 'ripped files'

[aidanjt]

...

This law isn't about commercial copyright infringement, that's already criminally culpable, this is about every day people just downloading content. If a company systematically uses your creative works without your permission or compensation that's one thing, they are then objectively depriving you of income. But the decision-making and financial exchange processes for an individual is vastly different and utterly unpredictable in its dynamics, from that of a company engaging in for-profit copyright infringement.

Say you have an ad-supported journal website, and Joe Public has adblock installed, while browsing your site, technically they just downloaded a copy of your IP for free. You may have 'lost' 2p or whatever, but let's say Joe hates your ads for whatever reason, if he didn't have adblock on he probably wouldn't bother following your journal at all, so you didn't really lose anything. Moreover, let's say Joe thinks about 10% of your articles are interesting, so he shares them with his friends via email/social media/etc, and 90% of his friends and family doesn't have adblock, well suddenly you get a bunch of more traffic. If you had just blocked Joe simply because he's 'stealing' from you, you would have lost out on all that ad revenue.

This is why copyright infringement isn't theft. You're not deprived of the original copy due to the creation of an unauthorised copy, you still retain ownership of the content. Copyright owners deserve compensation for their work for sure. They even get commercial monopoly rights and quasi-legal price fixing thrown in. But they don't deserve to be free of any and all market forces. Including the inability to attract customers to legally consume your content, that's on you to come up with a successful business model.

[Tpyo]

I may be misunderstanding their intentions - I have no problem with a 10-year sentence for online piracy in an appropriate context. Basically, if this were applied to an individual who downloaded for personal use, I agree it would be absurd. However, if this were e.g. an individual running a site that allowed others to download/stream pirated content for profit (and assume in this case we're talking entirely hosted by them, not just link aggregating etc), this does not seem unreasonable.

[Corky34]

The reason that governments should always favour business is that business creates economic activity = GDP.

Silly me I thought it was hard working people that created economic activity, these businesses sure are kind letting people work for them when they don't even need them.

No. Like sentences for most things, these are UP TO ten years.

So because it's UP TO that changes that you COULD get less jail time for racially-aggravated assault, carrying a loaded firearm, or being a pimp than you would for downloading the latest episode of GoT, or for format shifting your CD collection? If UP TO is a valid argument then why not just make all crimes UP TO life imprisonment.

[smilertoo]

This shows what utter whores our politicians are. The rich studios have convinced (bought them) them that downloading films deserves the same jail time as murder.

[eugenius]

Should we have 10 year's sentences for lying politicians?

[Gunge]

This law isn't about commercial copyright infringement, that's already criminally culpable, this is about every day people just downloading content.

I don't follow where you get this opinion from.

The sections of law which are relevant are s107(2A) and s198(1A) of the CDPA1988. These relate to business activities, or parties who are not operating a business but nevertheless infringe 'by communicating the work to the public'. There are also requirements that the scale much be such that it 'affect[s] prejudicially the owner of the copyright' and that the party 'knows or has reason to believe that, by doing so, he is infringing copyright in that work'.

It is to catch distributors of work who know or should know that what they are doing is wrong, not the average man downloading an infringing film or article.

[spolsh]

It's a shame they can't just log everyone's traffic and just send them a bill for any media they've downloaded.

"Dear Mr Spolsh, someone at your IP address watched epsiode 1 of GoT, please send us one months sky subscription money or we'll send the heavies round."

[Saracen]

In principle this seems fair, sentencing should be down to damage and intent not platform used for the crime. But...

I can see how someone can eg sell the latest Minions movie at a market stall and make money, and how that can be big criminal money and will even take on faith that organised crime can be involved.

But how does a criminal gang make money serving content on the internet? Serving adverts to downloaders? Are they taking Netflix style subscriptions? Genuinely puzzled here.

If this is going after individuals who were clearly never going to pay for anything anyway, I think the existing legislation seems adequate.

Either way, this seems rather "meh" to me compared to making ripping illegal in the UK again.

It's not just about criminals making money, though. It's about damaging revenues for the creators of content in the first place.

At the micro end, there's people like me just making a living, relying on not being ripped off to do so. At the other end, there's very big companies that make many millions from a major release. But those millions have to reward investors that put money up in the first place, pay wages of hundreds or thousands of people taking part in producing work, and providing funds to invest in the next multi-million pound risk.

10-year sentences aren't about some kid pirating a film in his bedroom, they're about large-scale piracy that puts that entire chain at risk or, at a minimum, reduces the scale and scope of operations, by providing the means and mechanisms for piracy on a vast scale. The less even big studios make because of piracy, the fewer films, etc, will get made.

[Saracen]

This law isn't about commercial copyright infringement, that's already criminally culpable, this is about every day people just downloading content. If a company systematically uses your creative works without your permission or compensation that's one thing, they are then objectively depriving you of income. But the decision-making and financial exchange processes for an individual is vastly different and utterly unpredictable in its dynamics, from that of a company engaging in for-profit copyright infringement.

Say you have an ad-supported journal website, and Joe Public has adblock installed, while browsing your site, technically they just downloaded a copy of your IP for free. You may have 'lost' 2p or whatever, but let's say Joe hates your ads for whatever reason, if he didn't have adblock on he probably wouldn't bother following your journal at all, so you didn't really lose anything. Moreover, let's say Joe thinks about 10% of your articles are interesting, so he shares them with his friends via email/social media/etc, and 90% of his friends and family doesn't have adblock, well suddenly you get a bunch of more traffic. If you had just blocked Joe simply because he's 'stealing' from you, you would have lost out on all that ad revenue.

This is why copyright infringement isn't theft. You're not deprived of the original copy due to the creation of an unauthorised copy, you still retain ownership of the content. Copyright owners deserve compensation for their work for sure. They even get commercial monopoly rights and quasi-legal price fixing thrown in. But they don't deserve to be free of any and all market forces. Including the inability to attract customers to legally consume your content, that's on you to come up with a successful business model.

My comment was about your assertion that

...

No, that's absurd. There's no loss to imaginary property being 'stolen'.

...

and explained what the loss is to "imaginary property", that being IP rights, being 'stolen'. Nor does Copyright law, or these proposed changes, refer to 'theft".

Why? Because theft is a very specific offence the definition of which precedes our current problems, and isn't relevant to them.

HOWEVER, that's easy enough to solve. Amend the Theft Act to include not just depriving owners of physical property from their property, but of IP rights owners from their IP property.

For example, part of the definition of "theft", and one that piracy apologists often jump on is that by copying, you don't deprive the original owner of his property. But in IP terms, YOU DO.

I explained why earlier.

I write an article, and sell it in the UK. Someone rips it off and sells it in Australia.

My IP rights include FIRST publication in each jurisdiction. As a result of that pirate publication, my ability to sell ANY Australian publisher first serial rights have gone, and gone permanently. Like virginity, once it's gone, it's gone.

My ability to make an income from that article in Australia have, at the very least, been significantly reduced and very possibly, lost altogether. PERMANENTLY.

This is what you referred to as "imaginary property". To me, on my tiny little scale, it's anything but imaginary. Those rights might be intangible, but the EFFECT on me and on that carpenter are the same .... lost income.

All these proposed changes do is bring sentencing for such intangible property exactly in line with sentencing for copyright infringement in physical property.

So, someone rips off Apple for a phone design, or Cartier for a watch, or Silhouette fod sunglasses, and THAT copyright infringement carries 10 years. They rip off a studio for a film and it carries two years?

We are NOT talking about Apple or Cartier having physical goods stolen. That's Theft Act territory. We're talking about IP rights in BOTH cases. In one case, "imaginary" rights in physical goods design for ten years, in the other, "imaginary" rights in, say, a movie.

But in BOTH cases, it's what you referred to as "imaginary".

[Saracen]

Should we have 10 year's sentences for lying politicians?

Do we have adequate prison space?

[Corky34]

My IP rights include FIRST publication in each jurisdiction. As a result of that purate publication, my ability to sell ANY Australian publisher first serial rights have gone, and gone permanently. Like virginity, once it's gone, it's gone.

Are there such things jurisdictions in an online world?

It seems when trying to apply existing views, laws, and/or other ways that we've historically carved up the real world in the past just don't apply or don't work, no matter how hard TPTB try, the two worlds and the rules that govern them seem incompatible.

[rob4001]

This is what happens when you have powerful lobby groups that are only have their interests and a politicians ear/wallet. When the sentence is longer than most violent crimes you know the system is rotten.

[Saracen]

Are there such things jurisdictions in an online world?

It seems when trying to apply existing views, laws, and/or other ways that we've historically carved up the real world in the past just don't apply or don't work, no matter how hard TPTB try, the two worlds and the rules that govern them seem incompatible.

Yes, though there are occasions when both evidence-gathering and prosecution can be problematic. Putting that another way, just because we can't deal with all instances doesn't mean we should decline to deal with any, Besides, it's not the point. This is not about new laws, but about changing sentences for existing offences.

As for my publishing rights, yes, there most definitely are such jurisdictions, and most reputable publishers respect them.

In some cases, I licence worldwide publication, but in print only. In others, it's UK only but multimedia. In others, it's "all rights" ... except those that are inalienable mine and not assignable. What varies is the fee I can require for given rights. If I licence UK-only inc electronuc rights, and it's published online, then sure, readers in Australia can access the UK publication. In that sense, there's no borders. But the benefit accrues to the UK publication by pulling in worldwide readers, thereby benefitting them, ad-revenues, etc. But an Australian company can't publish, online or otherwise, without similarly licencing from me.

I'm skirting around the complexities of it, because in fact, rights deals can be more complex than that.

For instance, a deal with a UK publisher might be for FBSR (First British Serial Rights) for print, and non-exclusive worldwide rights. So, that UK company has, in simple terms, bought the right to :-

- FIRST printed publication in the UK, but only the UK
- UK reprint rights, and maybe flyers, etc
- online right to publish, but not exclusive rights.

I then retain the right to publish, or licence publication

- anywhere other then UK, for first publication
- subsequent to first UK publication, I can publish in UK
- online publication, whenever I wish, providing I don't trample on the FSBR I sold.

So, in terms of "jurisdictions" for my work, yeah, there are in the online world, but it's not straightforward.

In practical terms, magazines often want first printed rights, and non-exclusive electronic rights because they want to publish first in their area in print, then later (depending on magazine cycle) either on their website or even in CD collections or anthologies.

Clearly, in that situation, what's needed is first exclusive print rights with non-exclusive online rights means multiple magazines can publish more or less simultaneously in multiple areas, then add to websites as they wish. So, I have the ability to sell one article several times, which means I can make more from it, while still keeping it cheaper for each publisher than "all rights" would be, because that would preclude me doing anything else with it.